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Monday, October 21, 2013

Sarah from Quilt Candy submitted this awesome modern I heart NY quilt. Sarah has a lot of fun quilt finishes here. She also sells quilts and buntings here, cute stuff. We are so happy Sarah shared her neat quilt with us. What a fun modern quilt with unique fabrics. Love it!

I was pottering
about the kitchen one morning when I heard a load 'thud' of mail land on the
floor. Nothing unusual, as I'm no
stranger to ordering fabric online :-)
But there was an unfamiliar looking package addressed to me and I was
pretty sure I hadn't ordered anything recently...

I opened it up and this was inside...

Wow! So much gorgeous fabric, featuring New York
Skylines, a map of the Subway and a wonderful multicoloured illustrated
map. I knew immediately who it was
from...my wonderful blogging friend Chrissie, who lives in New
York!

I was completely
overwhelmed by her generosity and totally in love with these gorgeous fabrics,
which I soon learnt were from a design collection made exclusively for The City
Quilter, the Mecca of quilting shops in New York. After much stroking and admiring, it suddenly
dawned on me – I was going to have to make something with them, and it
had to be fabulous – oh the pressure!

I am lucky
enough to say I've been to New York before.
It was back in 2004, with my mum, for 5 days. We did all the sights; Statue of Liberty,
Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, Bloomingdales, Macy's,
Broadway, you name it. And despite the
rain and the cold (oh my goodness, I have never been so cold!) I can genuinely
say that I did love New York. So this
was the inspiration for my quilt.

The design I had
in mind needed a little more of the white fabric, so I found myself on the City Quilter website, where I came
across a wonderful New York Times print, that was an off white, and worked perfectly with the black on white city scape
print for the background of my quilt.

I loved the idea
of a text quilt with text print, so I chose to write the words 'I Heart NY' in
squares. The writing was made up of the
subway print and the white on back skyline print. I think the heart is my favourite bit of all.

For the backing,
Chrissie very generously supplied me with several metres (or should I say
yards) of this wonderful illustrated map of New York print.

I just love how
the colours are such a wonderful contrast compared with the black and white
front of the quilt.

The colours of
the map are just fantastic, and there's so much detail to pour over. It makes
it practically a double sided quilt!

Can you see the
quilting? I opted for ½ inch either side
of the seam lines, both vertically and horizontally. I wanted it to be linear, to represent the
grid like formation of the streets and avenues of NYC. My goodness my mum and I had fun navigating
those while we were there!

Finally, I used
some of the black skyline print to bind the quilt.

And then I was
posed with another challenge. I needed
to photograph the quilt. But I don't
live in New York. I live on a tiny
island, surrounded by views like this;

And it didn't
seem right to photograph my NY quilt against the skyline of the (very small)
local town. That would be false
advertising!

So an empty car
park was the most fitting option. Grey,
concrete and linear.

And blowing a
gale and freezing cold!

This is a truly
special quilt for me. Now I can wrap
myself in it, and think of my wonderful friendship with Chrissie, and how we
have got to know one another and shared so much. Thank you so much for such a
generous gift Chrissie, it means the world to me! Hopefully it will only be a matter of time
before I head to New York again so that we can finally meet, and I'll be taking
my quilt with me :-)

Wonderful quilt! I love how you used the text fabric on the front--it's so busy, which is very NYC! Sorry you froze your tail off on your visit--maybe that makes the "quilt" part an even more appropriate way to remember your time there. :)

I've been lucky enough to see it in person, and its even more spectacular in real life. Sarah's work is always of the highest standard and the different colour schemes on either side are wonderful. The colourful side so vibrant and exciting, and the black and white side so crisp and cosmopolitan.

That is beauty indeed. Let me tell you that my daughter is going to visit NY mext January. I would like make her a quilt with that fabric design. Could you please tell me where can she get that piece of fabric in NY? Do you have any address? Thank you very much in advance !